Message from the FBA President
Doug Wittich
Dear members of FBA,
It has been 20 months since I was asked and accepted the position of President of FBA and 26 months since we entered a world that few of us ever experienced before. With the belief that Covid would be short lived the board of directors started the planning for the following year.
The first order of business was to interview candidates for the Executive Director’s position as our beloved Bernadine Rudichuk made the very difficult decision to leave FBA in order to experience retirement and more important, support her family by looking after her grand daughter. Bernadine participated in the interviewing of her replacement before passing the torch over to Bryan Burns.
During this early process the board of directors participated in our yearly strategic planning workshop, although at a distance we where still in belief this to shall pass and we would soon be hosting fireside chats, seminars and the much revered awards banquet. Sadly lock down escalated and all events went on hold.
Fast forward to 2022, FBA is now in search for a new executive director following the resignation of Bryan Burns. Bryan worked parttime for FBA and parttime on his own company that sadly succumbed to the covid restrictions. This resulted in Bryan accepting a full time job. Bryan will continuing during the transition to the new ED and also completing the planning for our Awards Banquet. If you know someone that would be exceptional in this position, please let us know.
Our membership has been maintained with normal attrition along the with addition of new members. One of the main attributes of FBA is our teams. A couple groups have maintained a strong presence through the lock down while other groups have struggled due to zoom being the only alternative to meeting in person. One goal highlighted from our strategic planning day was the need to focus on bringing new members on board in order to enhance our existing teams while creating additional teams. I will assume for the time being that this need has not changed and that will be our mandate moving forward.
The first event post covid is our Awards Banquet on June 1st. With expectation of having a new ED in place by June we will be able to commence working through the plan put in place 26 months ago. I miss the fireside chats, workshops and seminars and just the simple comradery. What was hot topics back two years ago has likely changed due to arising issues such as staff shortages among other items deriving from our economy. These are all challenges we need to acknowledge in order to help support our family members in business.
We will revisit and create relevant topics for our up coming events. Any feed back regarding ideas of what you would like to see, please pass this along to anyone of our board members.
Our Mission is to promote the sustainability and growth of Vancouver Island business families by providing education and support through community and shared experience. More than ever before the services FBA provide are even more required as goal posts have changed and support is required. We have family members that are long in the tooth when it comes to managing business and we have relatively new business members but at the end of a day no one was prepared for what has transpired over the last two years.
Though we can point at Covid it needs to be said that it was predicted years ago that we as business people would be faced with staff shortages and rising cost of doing business. That means regardless of our time in business we are all challenged with the current events and need to work together to find a pathway to a better situation.
Come join us so we can shake hands once again at our awards banquet on June 1st.
Sincerely,
Douglas J. Wittich
FBA President
FBA - your business family.
Our Mission
To promote the sustainability and growth of Vancouver Island business families by providing education and support through community and shared experience.
Our Vision
We are an engaged and supportive community of vibrant Vancouver Island business families and advisors who connect, share ideas and learn from each others’ unique experiences.